Solving a School's Fiscal Crisis Through Cooperation
Michael F. McGoff and James Van Voorst of SUNY Binghamton shared how inter-unit cooperation and integration of planning solved a financial crisis for that institution's School of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LS&A). This image shows Michael:
Binghamton is a selective institution which receives 35,000 applications for enrollment each year and admits about 2,200. LS&A is not only a strong academic department, but it is important to the professional programs in its service of general education requirement classes. LS&A got in over its budgetary head due to a number of things, which included using one-time funds for ongoing expenses and issues derived from increased enrollment which caused more hiring of adjuncts and more time off for tenure track faculty, thus costing more dollars.
Michael and James described the process, partly based on pre-existing trust among high level administrators, which permitted collaboration between the department, the provost's office, and the administrative vice president's office to examine, analyze, and implement changes to solve the fiscal crisis that was faced by LS&A.
The bottom line is that in the third year of a plan which saw implementation of those changes and three years of supplemental funding for LS&A, with its budget now capable of being fully funded in the ongoing, regular budget process.
They shared a handout titled "An Approach to Budget Reductions," which emphasizes that management must step up. We have permission to share that list here, which we have done by photographing the two sides of that sheet of paper, below:
Binghamton is a selective institution which receives 35,000 applications for enrollment each year and admits about 2,200. LS&A is not only a strong academic department, but it is important to the professional programs in its service of general education requirement classes. LS&A got in over its budgetary head due to a number of things, which included using one-time funds for ongoing expenses and issues derived from increased enrollment which caused more hiring of adjuncts and more time off for tenure track faculty, thus costing more dollars.
Michael and James described the process, partly based on pre-existing trust among high level administrators, which permitted collaboration between the department, the provost's office, and the administrative vice president's office to examine, analyze, and implement changes to solve the fiscal crisis that was faced by LS&A.
The bottom line is that in the third year of a plan which saw implementation of those changes and three years of supplemental funding for LS&A, with its budget now capable of being fully funded in the ongoing, regular budget process.
They shared a handout titled "An Approach to Budget Reductions," which emphasizes that management must step up. We have permission to share that list here, which we have done by photographing the two sides of that sheet of paper, below:
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BTW, SCUP manages two other online communities similar to this one: the Campus Heritage Planning Network and the Campus Sustainability Planning Network.
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BTW, SCUP manages two other online communities similar to this one: the Campus Heritage Planning Network and the Campus Sustainability Planning Network.
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